Mary-El Tarot
V - THE HIEROPHANT
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If you have found you way here you will be looking at both the newest and the oldest version of the Mary-el Hierophant. I have repainted, and been tortured by this card for many years as anyone who has followed my journal knows! My solution today is to reclaim the oldest Hierophant, which I have always loved, and fix the problems that were with it. I added the key and added the tetragrammaton to the stained glass window behind. I'll come back and add more details about the included symbolism later but wanted to point out now the order of the Hebrew letters and why.
This is the 5th card and the symbolism is arranged in a pentagram. If you were to draw a pentagram the upper point would start with the Hierophants head then come down to the lower right point which would be Yod and equated with Fire, the lightest of the 4 elements. It would then progress through the elements in order of density, moving up to the left corner with Vav/Air, across to the upper right to He/Water and back down to the lower left with final He/Earth and then back to the head again. In this way the elements aren't arranged in a square but a pentagram.
Notes on the painting:
I want to draw your attention to a few areas in particular:
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This is why I love oils thinned in turpentine!!! See those little striations? Those little tiny pools of color, doing their own thing but making a fantastic, perfect whole image? That's why!! Up close it looks like a mess but far way it is calculated. And you can see the light bouncing off the white ground and the little flakes of color suspended in their little rivers, LOVE IT. Ok, so it will soak into my unbroken skin and poison me, who cares? I'm just kidding really, for the sake of my kids who don't need to be poisoned I will wear gloves and ventilate, but otherwise, what small price is a little toxicity to meeting ones destiny?
I love the word Hierophant. I have traced it back to the world of the ancient Greeks who used it to describe a high priest of the Eleusinian mysteries. It means to show or make known the sacred.
The Hierophant, or Pope, or Priest, is a go-between for the world of men and the world of Gods.
I decided to make, and keep, the Hierophant female as I wanted to explore that part of our communication with the divine, that part where we do not need to rely on others but can look within our selves for all of the answers we will ever need, and at the very least, for confirmation and the feel of truth in what we learn from others.
What you are seeing in the painting is people who are crowded and moving forward from the foreground all the way back to the hills on the horizon. They are being led, or joined even, by a beautiful woman spirit.
I see this as a collective soul if you will, an arch-angel, a greater spirit of humanity. The landscape here, where the woman resides, is one where we are not separate and are all moving towards a common goal, like the fingers of a hand.
I am making a chart for the Hierophant and the 5s so I can paint a pentagram into them. I am almost done, and then I will lay out and paint the Hierophant.
If you remember the last set of 5s didn't have a major arcana at their point, so this is different, better. The arrangement of the elements will be traditional (as far as tradition goes in these matters), it did seem the best way after thoroughly looking it over. So starting at the top you have spirit, the Hierophant, swinging down to the lower right you have Fire 5W, then following the lines you go in descending elemental order to Air, Water, Earth and then back up to Spirit.
The Tetragrammaton starts with Yod in Fire and then goes counter clockwise up to Heh, then skips Spirit, then Vav at Air then back down to the final Heh in Earth at the bottom left. I'll eventually do up charts for this I can post on the site.
Let's see if I can do it here:
Hiero
Spirit, white
5 Swords, Air 5 Cups, Water
yellow blue
Yetzirah, Vav Briah, Heh
5 Disks, Earth 5 Wands, Fire
black red
Assiah, Final Heh Atziluth, Yod
Hello Venus! Hello Microcosm! Hello Golden Ratio, hello Tartarus! (sorry, I'll explain that one another time)
You know, it did cross my mind once or twice that the Hiero might be the missing Prudence. That would make the virtues evenly spaced, 5, Prudence, 8 Justce, 11 Fortitude, 14 Temperance.
Something I wanted to play around with a little bit was the more traditional temperance image with one foot in water and one on land, a crown and irises, spirit as the angel. That would make a different arrangment on the pentagram, it would be this:
spirit (angel)
Fire (crown) Air (*)
Water (foot in water) Earth (foot earth)
* If memory serves Iris is the Greek Goddess of the rainbow, sounds airy to me.
Temperance does reduce to the Hierophant so I take any pattern in it seriously. However, this doesn't have a clear pattern through the pentagram, its more of a lightning path from top to bottom, nice, but doesn't make a never ending loop. This was one of my options though because I think it is more reflective of human body, where our hands are more active, interracting and changing our world and feet more passive/grounding, our roots.
It's tempting for sure.
Well, I don't have to make a final decision until I paint the 5s, the Hierophant will be spirit which will be on top no matter what. In the mean time I think I will try to look up why Pamela used this arrangement, if it shows up in any older tarots (other than just red and blue or a mix of fire and water). The older tarots mix opposites where the Rider Waite seems, to me, to mix all 4, or 5 even, elements. And why does the angel have the sign for water over the breast? I personally can't look at this without thinking Aquarius but wasn't Waite, an adherent to the GD of the opinion that Aquarius is Air? Why water then. Questions to answer before I make up my mind.
There are attributions of the elements to the cardinal virtues as well, I think by Plato, I would do well to look those up also.
I need to confirm it, but here is what it looks like Plato attributed them according to some of my old notes.
Prudence actually sounds very, very much like the HP to me. But that's not here or there at this point.
And yes, there is water on Temperance. It almost reminds one of another meaning of Temperance - the prohibition against alcohol and to temper ones drinking or appetites.
Ok, that is more than enough info for today. I will get working on that plan for the pentagram so I can get on the painting!
Subject: Hierophant under way
I'm working on the Hierophant underpainting.
I have resolved several issues over the last week or so and I am seeing how much I get taken in by my insecurities. //something I noticed last night - I have been arming myself with ll of this different information and made all of these plans on how I was going to better my technique and had special tools at the ready, yet, as soon as I finished transferring the sketch to the board every single thing I planned went out the window and I, or some part of me, just went to work, deftly, sublimely, knowingly, like, yeah yeah yeah I know you had all these plans but now its my turn, I know what I'm doing, get out of the way.
Working on the vultures is one of the most natural things I have ever done! I mean, this isn't the most highly detailed, not a scientific rendering or some hyper-realism, but just the forms of them, vague as they might be, seem to just come out of me so incredibly easily, off the top of my head I can't think of anything easier. It is as though they live in my mind nd reside in my fingers. And these are the guys that just sprang to mind after seeing them in the tree after the fire. I have no doubts now, questions, yes, always, but doubts, no. Even if I don't use this it was something I had to paint.
Beauty in imperfection. And death, and life.
Big lesson learned. On to my day!
Subject: The Pope comes hither?
Something odd happened with the Hierophant. While I was putting in the details of the sketch I found myself adding a lot of details that I had not previously intended. It started with the pentagram. I have added the top point of the pentagram and there is also the horizontal line which will connect to the other two upper points. I looked at it and said, hmmm, looks like a horizon line and began to flesh it out as such. First there were some mountains then some buildings, a little boat, and I was thinking about a conversation Michael and I had had earlier about what I pictured my utopia to be, and I was saying it would be Mediterranean, I always pictured my most ideal setting would be among Italian cypresses, and so I started adding this type of landscape to the horizon line. It struck me as odd, it is such a conflict of images, an almost native American looking thing, pagan looking too, against a European city on a shore.
I have it sitting on a little table top easel waiting to be painted. We were out shopping all day and when we came back about half an hour ago I walked by and it fell on me like a ton of bricks, goddamn it I brought it back to the Pope LOL! I might scuttle this image because of it and yet I am fascinated and want to bear it out and see what happens. I don't know though......
Anyway, it is just waiting for me to have the time, maybe I will get lucky and everyone will fall asleep early tonight?
I will keep you apprised!
Entry Date: Monday, November 27, 2006
Subject: The Pope
The Hierophant did not go well.
First, I couldn't get over the bizarre mesh of image going on, but gave it a shot anyway and it did not look good. Pity, would have been a very nice background for a different card.
So, I decided to take out the background. I have a new respect for fixative! I always treated it delicately as though too much of anything would upset its delicate covering...NOT! I did everything short of sanding it and not the slightest reduction in the image beneath occurred! So, I thought I would try drawing over it, which I did, but that didn't look good either. Then, throwing up my hands, I re-gessoed the whole background area.
Did this fix it? No. It did make something glaringly obvious to me though, that the pentagram outline threw off the whole flow of the image. Interesting how an upside down "V" the top of a pentagram, reflects the classic man with 2 sycophants, eh? Its the shape, the number and the top of a pentagram. I tell you, I have to wonder if it is really at the bottom, an inverse pentagram. perhaps that is one of the errors in my thinking on this card.....Maybe it is just rank MATERIAL. In all of its lack of love and spirit and compassion. No I don't believe that. No, I don't believe, as some do and have, that the physical world is accursed, or whatever, because it is the farthest away from God, no not at all, I think it is divine, the body of God.
Anyway, it's sitting there on the easel waiting for a background and I've lost the heart to give it one. Nothing fits. I have been wanting to give it an outdoor background but again I think that was an err on my part. Yes, I consider the world, the outdoors, nature, freedom, my temple, but where is it really? It is my body, my heart, and symbolically, perhaps, that is best served in a structure.
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that you are an individual separate from all other things. Maybe that is the joy or bliss of experiencing ones individual gifts and individual experience of life.
I have never wanted to be the kind of person who believes in a destruction of the self, a denial of the ego; I think its as important as spirit, to experience the flesh, to revel in the mundane, to find beauty and sacredness in things the way they are - screw that original sin BS, screw that self hating, nature, and by nature I mean our true nature as humans, we are awesome,every single person is awesome, every blade of grass, every cloud.
So the other painting did not make it, there is still a root of truth in there I guess I shouldn't expect it to develop overnight (cussing!)
In the meantime.... for fun and just because I like it and to play with my new watercolors I have started doing some little aceo cards, simple watercolor paintings of Matryoshka. They are cute and unstressful!I'll let the Hierophant go back into percolation mode for a little while.
I'm a idiot. Maybe all along I should have been treating this like earth and not like spirit. V. Maybe I should stop trying to be so rebellious and just going along with traditional correspondences? Thoughtfully pondering. What is the pope after all but gods authority on earth? Not saying he actually is, but that's the aim or the theory anyway and it is the foundation of this card.
Subject: A wimple subject
I just noticed something interesting. I was searching my hard drive, hoping I still had a scan of the first Hierophant sketch, when I saw little thumbnails of my Hiero and the RW thumbnail side by side. One of the things I liked best bout my old Hiero, for no particular reason, well maybe to be a little wicked, hee hee, was the nuns wimple. In small, I can see in the RW Hiero how there is a white area above the hieros head that swoops down into the columns that is the same shape. Did I subconsciously pack away that shape from here? Possible. Since I had it out I took a look and I dont think I ever noticed how unmanly this Hiero is. In fact, look at the sycophants, one is dressed in roses and one lillies, not surprising, Waite liked roses and lillies. I can't recall exactly off the top of my head why, but symbolocally speaking roses are a symbol of Mary and so are Lillies. Lillies, further, are related ro Lillith, an old symbol this is. It get's related to Mary though the story of the anunciation, the archangel Gabriel supposedly handed Mary, or maybe that in turn is symbolic, just the giving of the lillies in the first place, that she is carrying the child of God.
A few things strike me immediately, where is Eve? Is this, in fact, a trinity of women here? 3 women, 2 columns, phallic for sure, =5?
All fun stuff. And all suits the new image I have in mind. Sorry I can't mention it yet, i feels too delicate to set loose just yet.
I have so so so much stil to do on this card. This card ts up so many loose ends. This card makes me or breaks me.
That's all I had to say for now:)
Subject: Roses and Lilies
You have to know that I love the old Hierophant. I think it's wrong but I love it none-the-less. So I am thinking I can make things right by altering it or repainting it. It is just a matter of making some decisions. My big idea is cool, but little vulgar. Not vulgar in a tasteless way but in an obvious way and I don't think literal or obvious is good in a tarot unless you are using the tarot to support something, while ....well I guess I am using it to support something I guess, my vision of the universe or nature of the universe.
Anyway there are some things I did not take advantage of origially, the stained glass was one. A major one. So I would like to do that now. The way I see it the 2 windows and the 2 babies are equal to the 4 elements and on one level this card is about the manifestation of divine nature within the walls of those 4 elements.
That brings me to something I wanted to bring up, that of associations. I am really, really seeing the earth in the Hierophant now. I always felt funky about it being in the
Emperor and the
Empress, the Empress because it was 3 and the Emperor because, well frankly, because it was male which made me ask, why not the Empress? But now I feel like I am getting it, and it is in the 5. And it does tie back into astrology and Taurus, did I never notice that I considered the Tiger an earth symbol, a tiger which lives in
Temperance?
Anyway,this is making me re-evaluate what is going on.
I would like to say that one of my tenants in starting this project was that I would take nothing for granted, I would test every assumption, I would not take anyone's word for anything. Stupid and stubborn perhaps, but I wanted to be able to stand behind what I made, to say, yes, and this is why and this is how I confirmed it and this is what I saw and experienced, and this is the subtle nature.
I think when I first had the thought it was much more light in nature but got very serious as time went on. Isn't it funny how little thoughts you have can turn into these huge juggernauts as time goes on? It's probably something that was meant to be, or vice versa, or whatever. It was intent, the intent behind this project, to test correspondences and to balance the sexes. I may or may not have been successful but have learned whole lot along the way.
Anyway, if 5 is in fact earth and not spirit...or perhaps I should say that earth has a lot more components than just the physical stuff, that earth is dead without the spirit in it, then does this not align it with traditional astrology and golden dawn correspondences? Maybe this was the biggest test of all. Maybe nothing was being tested it was simply a matter of my catching up with the pack, getting an education. I am going to clear my mind, go back, and go over all of the old information again.
I hope I don't sound like I think the old correspondences weren't made without a lot of careful thought and study, I know they must have been! But like I said, I don't want to make assumptions, I want to know why, I want a foundation upon which to rest any symbolism I use. I want to test everything and find if it is sound.
I am finding particular interest in the rose and lily symbols, very intriguing! Here is a list I wrote about them last night:
Some random thoughts, the Emperor is the throne and the Hierophant is seated in it, then if they are wedded (note aries and gemini) , the lovers, (never thought of the lovers as Hiero and Emperor before, taurus and aries, aries, a spring lamb, is there a sacrifical element to the Emperor?) together they equal 9, the end of our primary numbers, the individual reflection of the divine.
I have been plagued by an image of the star linked with earth, notice even how the pentagram is our symbol of choice for the the earth suit? The Star = 1+7 = 8, Justice, the star is the macrocosmic earth, how does that translate in the Hierophant?
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Entry Date: Saturday, November 25, 2006
Entry Date: Saturday, November 25, 2006
Entry Date: Saturday, December 02, 2006
Entry Date: Sunday, December 03, 2006
The Easter Lily supposedly rises from the ground in spring from nothing but a dead bulb and has become a symbol of Christs rising.
